On 29 August 2019, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) concluded its 99th session, in which it reached a historic decision on jurisdiction and admissibility in two of the three inter-State communications submitted under Article 11 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Qatar v Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Qatar v United Arab Emirates. The Committee decided that it has jurisdiction in the two communications and has also declared them admissible. The Committee’s Chairperson will now appoint an ad hoc Conciliation Commission in the two communications in compliance with Article 12 of the Convention, whose good offices will be made available to the States concerned with a view to an amicable solution of the matter. In the third inter-State communication, Palestine v Israel, the Committee decided to postpone its consideration of the issue of jurisdiction to its 100th session, to be held in November-December 2019.

The Chair of the Committee stressed that ‘the decisions on the inter-State communications were the first such decisions that any human rights treaty body had ever adopted’. The tone is markedly different from that adopted at the conclusion of its previous 98th session on 10 May 2019:

The Committee had examined three interstate communications submitted under Article 11 of the Convention: one by Qatar against Saudi Arabia; one by Qatar against the United Arab Emirates; and another by the State of Palestine against Israel. While it had held hearings on these communications, the Committee had decided not to take any decisions, due to the legal complexity of the issues broached and a lack of resources.